Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries — most recently RBG — that deal with issues before the court. As Newsweek put it, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, including the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. On a lighter note, Esquire magazine twice named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor on TV shows, she has also written for major newspapers and periodicals — among them, The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and New York Magazine, and others.
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President Trump has more than 130 vacancies to fill on the federal bench, and he is beginning the process somewhat haphazardly.
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Two judicial nominees' blogging dominated their confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The posts featured conspiracy theories and an ad hominem attack on a Supreme Court justice. -
High Court Strikes Down Law Favoring Unwed Mothers Over Unwed FathersThe Supreme Court struck down a federal law that treats unwed fathers and mothers unequally — a major victory for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has battled the discriminatory rule for decades. -
The Supreme Court has ruled that treating a claim of citizenship differently based on whether the mother or the father of the claimant was a U.S. citizen violates the Constitution. The court directed Congress to change current law so as to make it gender neutral.
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'The Quiet Man': The Powerful Conservative White House Lawyer In The Middle Of It AllThe White House counsel is the president's official lawyer, and his job description puts him at the center of every legal decision made in the White House. -
As President Trump's official lawyer, Don McGahn's job description puts him at the center of every legal decision made in the White House. Even though his name is rarely mentioned, McGahn is involved in nearly all of the White House drama in the news.
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Supreme Court Rejects 2 N.C. Congressional Districts As UnconstitutionalThe Supreme Court on Monday upheld a lower court ruling, which found the two districts had been unlawfully drawn to diminish the voting power of African-Americans and ordered them redrawn. -
The Supreme Court upheld the rejection of two congressional districts in North Carolina by a lower court. The lower court ruled the districts had been unlawfully drawn to diminish the voting power of African Americans and ordered them redrawn.
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President Trump has called out the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the recent ruling on withholding federal grants was made by a single district court judge. -
Judges from the 9th Circuit have ruled against the Trump administration in a series of big cases — first the travel ban and now sanctuary cities. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg joins us to talk about the court and it's legal reasoning.
